Expert Panel: Leadership to Improve Trust & Communication

In the recent VITALITY REPORT we learned one of the top issues blocking organizational performance is: leaders are not creating a context with enough trust and communication. How can emotional intelligence help?

In a lively discussion, experts from the upcoming World EQ Summit discuss insights on this pressing challenge, and how the science and practice of emotional intelligence equips leaders to build trust so communication grows, and change succeeds. The recording of the panel is below, along with the transcript.

In summary, five key points emerged; these will become the basis for many of the implementation plans developed at the World EQ Summit in November:

1. For leaders, authentic connection might feel like “vulnerability,” but actually it’s a way of showing integrity and strength.

2. In cultures where “saving face” is important, trust is challenged, the blame game flourishes and organisational silos develop.

Joshua Freedman: Hello everyone. Thank you for joining our discussion about leadership. We have conducted this survey since 2006. Since 2006, we have heard over and over and over that one of, if not, the top issue in organizations is leadership. On the screen you see a semantic analysis of the question: “What are the top two to three issues in your organization?” The semantic analysis software pulls out themes. You can see in the bottom right corner, there’s this dark blue, big bubble that says, “Lack.” It turns out, the bigger the size of the bubble, the more weighted that theme was.

You can see that theme is a lack of trust, a lack of communication, a lack of leadership, especially, a lack of management. Somehow, that’s connected with change.

That’s the theme of our conversation today: how do we solve this particular challenge? Before we get into the solution, let’s talk for a minute about the problem.

Alison, let’s start with you. To what extent is this a pressing issue in Australia?

Declining Trust Demands New Leadership Skills

Alison Lalieu: Good evening, Josh and everyone on the panel and all the attendees. My name is Alison Lalieu, and I lead an organization based out of Brisbane, in Queensland, called the UBalancer Solutions. We are a national coach network working primarily as executive leadership coaches. Many of our coaches are either EQ practitioners or SEI assessors. We blend emotional intelligence very strongly into our coaching programs.

Josh, to answer your question, your research is reflected in what we see. Organizations across Australia face declining trust. People are operating more in silos, people are feeling that they’re not being listened to. There’s a general lack of whole-hearted leadership, even in senior executive roles.

Jayne Morrison: Alison, I know that you also work in education, and at the Summit, you’re going to be presenting one of your case studies in education. I’m curious to know, do you see this, also, in the field of education?

Alison Lalieu: I’d almost say, it’s highlighted even more in the field of education. Certainly, here in Australia, our teachers are of being extremely overwhelmed. They’re expected to do more and more and more with less. It’s a very demanding role for them. They work terrific long hours and they’re absolutely exhausted. There is a lot of risk of burnout. People are caught in “task versus relationship.” It becomes difficult to maintain relationships when you are overwhelmed.

Lack of Trust Undermines Change

Joshua Freedman: Let’s continue that theme and check on the other side of the world. Yasmeen, task versus relationship, is that something that’s happening where you work?

Yasmeen Al Bulushi: Yes, absolutely. I’m from Oman and I can very much relate. I’m now taking on a totally new role as a College Dean. I am in a transition of a change. One of the biggest problems I am facing is the lack of trust.

There has been a rapid change in the management the last 10 years. Before my joining, there has been a two-year period without a Dean.

When I joined, I was trying to discuss some changes, but I felt that people already had lost trust in the leadership. There was resistance for any idea. “Oh, we had a lot of people promising this to us and then leaving us. How can we trust a new leader coming on board?”

They are still questioning how much they can trust. Over a period of 10 years, trust got destroyed. Now I have to assure people that good changes can happen, that this is a new leadership. I’m trying to build connection with the people in the organization, but there is a very high level of resistance.

Jayne Morrison: I think what you’re saying Yasmeen is very interesting because what our research shows is that if there’s only a bit of trust, you can do a bit of change. Whereas if you’re going in and trying to do a lot of change with a little trust, you just get into that cycle of resistance and everything goes backwards. I know you’re trying to do great things there, but I guess it’s patience that is going to be a virtue.

Joshua Freedman: Yet in organizations, we often don’t have time.

When we wrote Inside Change, one of the things you mentioned, Jayne, came across in our research. A senior editor at Fast Company, Alan Deutschman, pointed out that when we enter a change situation, we don’t have a blank slate. We come in to this moment of this relationship with a history. Yasmeen’s talking about that in her organization.

Lea, how does that history affect trust — and what can a leader do to not get to trip over this fact that she’s walking into this situation with all of this baggage from other people?

Lea Brovedani: I talk about the five commandments of trust. It’s caring, commitment, consistency, competence and communication. No one is going to follow you and trust you until they know that you really care about them. There’s things that you can do, like getting to know people. Simply talking to them makes a substantial difference.

Some things that people don’t think are a big deal are a very big deal: getting to know a person’s name, walking the floor, talking to different people. That’s one way to establish trust. Showing people that you’re consistent. Being able to show them that you’re human by admitting mistakes, and that’s another thing. I think that often, we’re taught that we’re supposed to hide all of the mistakes, but if you can admit them and show people that yes, it’s okay to freely disclose when mistakes are made. I’m obviously not talking about messing up all of the time, then that’s going to create distrust. But I’m saying if you make a mistake and you can talk to your people, admit the mistake, talk about what you’re going to do going forward, You can start establishing trust.

Is “Vulnerability” a Sign of Weakness?

Joshua Freedman: Lea, I want to stop you right there for one second. You’ve spent time in India. Jayne, you work a lot in India. You both are very familiar with the idea that in different cultures there’s different power distancing. In a culture of high power distancing, can leaders actually be vulnerable? Is that going to actually improve trust?

Jayne Morrison: Josh, if I can refer to the EQ Cafe facilitated by Dynamic Learning in Dubai today. During discussion participants recognised a strong link between vulnerability and trust and how one has to be prepared to be vulnerable to create trust, to be open and transparent.

Lea Brovedani: I spoke at a conference a few days ago and talked about how leaders don’t like the word vulnerable. Brene Brown talks about “vulnerability” which sounds like truth and feels like courage. Both can be a little frightening, but leaders need to be both powerful and fearless in order to display those. When I spoke to these leaders at the conference, a lot of them grabbed a hold of the fact that trade vulnerability is fearlessness and, when they’re interchangeable, all of the sudden they realize that if they’re willing to disclose, it really is being strong and fearless in order to do that because vulnerable people are fearless. It’s using the language that they’re willing to accept too.

Joshua Freedman: Let’s go back to some data. As all of the panelists and many of you on the webinar know, we look at these four KPIs in our Vital Signs model:

Retention

Productivity

Customer Focus

Future Success

We know from numerous studies since 2001, that the five drivers of organizational climate predict a massive percentage of the variation in the outcomes. Unfortunately in the vitality research this year from 95 countries, we see that many of these drivers are not so high in organizations and trust is the lowest.

Declining Trust, Demanding Change

Why is trust so low now? Allison, let’s come back to you. You talked a little bit about the pressures that you’re seeing in your clients. Why is trust so low today?

Alison Lalieu: Josh, I will come to that but prior to that I just have to share something. I recently worked with a big cohort of General Managers (GM) in a company here and we ran the Team Vital Signs (which uses the same model we’ve been discussing). Trust was the lowest score across the entire cohort of 19 GMs. Change the highest – just as in your global data, which is as interesting for me. People seemed open to change…

Joshua Freedman: Hungry for change!

Alison Lalieu: Yes – hungry for change. Very, very hungry for change. Going back to the trust, I’m very curious about this. I’m hoping to get some interesting data because each of these 19 GMs are in full 10-session coaching programs with our network and we’re tracking and measuring everything so let’s hope to get some really good insights here. One thing I often wonder about ,and I go back to one of the papers of yours I’ve read, where we used to trust big organizations, and that seems to have been shattered for a number of reasons. Today I was just reflecting, we’re quite happy to call an Uber and trust an individual who we’ve never met in our life before and put our child in that car or let our adolescent children go to Europe and sofa surf.

We’re prepared to trust at some very fundamental vulnerable level and yet we don’t trust big networks anymore so something big is at play there.

Joshua Freedman: Churches, governments, businesses, media, trust in all of those has plummeted in our generation.

Jayne Morrison: Isn’t it interesting Josh, that the organizations are ultimately people? It seems to me that we trust in the bricks and mortar and we trust in the building, for example we use the lift and so on, but it’s the people in the building that we often don’t trust.

Yasmeen Al Bulushi: For us here as well I feel that there is a lot of mistrust overall in the region. Even politically in the region the movement that is happening. It made a lot of people not trust governments. They do not trust leaders anymore. I’ll give you a very simple example. People here in Oman now are so much disappointed with what’s happening in the Gulf for instance where it’s considered to be one family. Those leadership images which were totally trusted, are not anymore.

Another trust level which has also gotten shaky is trust in the economics of the region. So much dependence on oil, everything, life is going very smooth, and suddenly you are having all these social and economic problems and no solutions. People have started questioning. It is not the government, it is leadership, it’s economy, it’s everything is going around them. Security level. Families. It seems that also that gap between the generations.

Also the communication level between parents and their kids, it’s also widening. That gap of trusting them totally. And that I agree with Jayne, it’s people. When people are lacking that trust on that level, when they are joining organization they’re questioning again intention of people, they are questioning whether they are capable, the capabilities of these leaders, they’re questioning whether changes possibility. There are so many elements to it and I think that with everything that is happening around us it is putting a question mark into the picture for everyone. What was taken for granted in the past is not anymore. We feel that that security level has gotten shaken up a bit.

The Business Value of Trust

Joshua Freedman: Lea, let’s talk about business for a minute. What do you make of this slide?

Lea Brovedani: Well, I’m associated with trust across America, trust around the world and they found similar slides. If you read anything around Edelman’s Trust Barometer, almost all of the research is coming back saying that there is a direct correlation between profitability and trustworthiness within organizations. When companies are actually focused on creating a trusting workplace, they will see the return in the profits. I mean it’s exactly what you’re saying there.

Jayne Morrison: In the chat, Lata has mentioned that in most Indian companies trust is low because people don’t interact or communicate with each other and the open door policy is basically a myth. I think that in a lot of places in our part of the world and I’m talking Middle East, Africa and India people are so busy not being vulnerable and covering up that the whole blame culture and silo-working builds and that, of course, is the death of trust. Or maybe — which comes first? I’m not sure, but the two don’t go hand in hand to create a great environment.

Yasmeen Al Bulushi: Yes, I can just relate with your previous slide. It is something I’ve experienced. Previously I worked for 17 years in an organization where I was given a huge amount of trust. In this situation I used to do more, work harder, to prove that I deserved that trust. This resulted in better performance and the confidence to innovate. Now I’m facing the opposite and it feels disappointing. Because I am new, trust levels are still shaking.

The result is that at times I feel that I’m not enjoying the work. I get those moments when I feel that, “Am I going to give up?” This has really made me realise what makes people work beyond hours, work passionately and so on.

Jayne Morrison: What Yasmeen’s saying is really underscoring the fact that trust is an emotion. And its reciprocal. If I trust you and then you’re more likely to trust me and vice versa. I think it’s really sad when I speak to leaders and I hear, “They’re not trustworthy. I can’t give them power, I can’t empower because they’re not trustworthy.” The question that pops us for me when I hear that is, “How do they feel about you?”

Lea Brovedani: And vulnerability, a lot of people see that word as a weak word. Vulnerability means that you are open to pain and open to getting this. It’s a strength but if you change some of that. I found that with a lot of leaders and talking to people, it’s not the big things that they’re getting caught up with. It’s the leader who says, “Yes, I’ll get back to you. The next time there’s an opportunity for you to work on this particular project, you’re the first person I’m going to come to.” The leader forgets and doesn’t talk to the person. That is a big deal. It’s a bunch of small little things.

Joshua Freedman: Small betrayals.

Lea Brovedani: Yes, exactly, small betrays that break trust. It’s not necessarily huge things. For a leader to go back and say, “You know, I said that I would contact you for this next proposal. Things got a little crazy and it just honestly didn’t even occur to me. I can understand that’s why you’re really upset.” That would be an example of vulnerability; going up to the person and saying, “I made a mistake.

Joshua Freedman: There’s some research about admitting that you’re wrong. Particularly in a political context. There are a lot of people who are questioning why is it that people believe a lie. And then even when confronted with the facts, they’re not willing to change because there’s an emotional cost to saying, “I was wrong.”

The Trust Challenge in Education

Alison, let’s go to you, what will you be sharing about these issues at the Summit in Dubai?

Alison Lalieu Josh, I’m speaking on an education case study. I love the point Lea made around communication. To me, in our leadership coaching and the work we’re seeing in organizational situations trying to build more trust into relationships with leaders, it’s so much around the use of language. I do think the pace of life, generally speaking, of people operating on oldthings, is pretty fast. They’ve got a lot to get through. It’s the smaller details that are overlooked, not intentionally sometimes. There’s a lot more telling and not enough asking. Just putting people into a straight-brain state really by not having the language skills.

To me, in our leadership work, a lot of the time it’s around actually working around communication and language, and helping them to ask questions they genuinely don’t know the answer for and to stay in curiosity a lot longer. It builds trust very, very quickly.

Joshua Freedman: So what is the key to enabling that, that you’re going to touch on at the Summit?

Alison Lalieu: The key to enabling that is starting with exploring how educators are experiencing trust with each other, and with parents. How the relationship has shifted over time.

Joshua Freedman: In North America there seems to be a polarization between parents and educators. Yes, I see heads nodding. Okay, go ahead, Alison.

Alison Lalieu There is expectations on teachers from parents, there’s been a shift in the style in the favor of parenting I think. Parents are dealing with a lot of difficult stuff at home. Josh, I presented a workshop to a group of parents in Melbourne recently and they were probably about 18 mums, one dad in the room. A number of the mums actually were crying and just as they shared how tough it’s actually feeling at home.

I think parents are struggling in leadership roles of leading their families. There’s a lot of overwhelming even in the home.

Joshua Freedman: So the waves are very very big.

Alison Lalieu Yes.

Joshua Freedman: In these big waves, it’s harder whether you’re at home or at school or in business. It’s harder to get through the day and get through the tasks and preserve relationships.

Yasmeen Al Bulushi: I was just thinking of the expectation levels on educational institutions. Now we’re facing this huge pressure, as Alison was pointing out, from parents in the educational cycle as a whole. Earlier there was very little global competition. Things were easier. Now kids have to compete internationally. Therefore everybody is wanting the next Einstein in their region and parents are competing to get that done in one way or another. There’s a lot of expectation in different roles including being parents and getting high educational performance in schools.

Lea Brovedani: I was just thinking about the time that I spent in India and talking to friends of mine who were parents. They told me that when there were tests, the marks were posted on the classroom door so you would go and see which student got the top spot, second spot and so on. This created a lot of pressure to have your child in the top spot or towards the top. It created a lot more pressure for the parents and maybe also made trust more challenging.

Josh Perhaps in some ways we’re trying to create pressure. Many, many years ago when I was a classroom teacher, I wanted to pressure my students. I wanted to pressure them to do well. As a parent, in some ways, I want to pressure my kids. And as a boss, as a CEO, if I listen to John Kotter’s work, I want to create urgency.

Jayne, this is a real paradox.

Jayne Morrison: I was actually just looking at the agenda next to me here. I see so many sessions that will help us gain global perspectives and new tools for these challenges.

The Challenge of People & Emotions

Joshua Freedman: I just want to say in this research — again since 2006 — we keep seeing the key issues in organizations are not on the financial and technical side. Respondents are seeing the issues are primarily on the relational side. For example, here in Silicon Valley, what I hear all the time is, “We have plenty of smart people, we know how to code, we know how to develop our systems, but working with people is tough.”

At the World EQ Summit, I’m looking forward to seeing real experiences we can draw on from around the world. Not broad themes, but very specific applications, cases, practices, methods…. thing we put can into place to create better organizational climate in businesses and schools.

Jayne Morrison: I’m really excited to hear more from Alison, from her case study. Then obviously, Lea and Yasmeen as well because they’re all experts in this area. They’re all in leadership positions, whether they’re working independently or like Yasmeen, the first lady Dean in our region, so very proud to have her with us. To hear them all talking about real examples of how trust and building this climate of psychological safety is so important not only to organizational performance but also to academic achievement because I see that filtering down in the academic or educational domain, too. How a lack of trust even at leadership level, being an emotion, how that filters down into the classroom, from the teachers. If they’re not feeling it at leadership level, it’s going to impact learning.

On the survey we asked, “How are people feeling at work?” The data on the slide says FRUSTRATION is the main feeling by far. Alison you want to go first? Does this surprise you?

Alison Lalieu: It doesn’t surprise me at all.

Joshua Freedman: Does this matter?

Alison Lalieu: Well it matters enormously because when they’re feeling frustrated, anxious and stressed their bodies are flooded with cortisol, and trust is going to plummet and their performance will plummet with it.

Joshua Freedman: Wait why? Why will trust plummet when people are frustrated, anxious and stressed?

Alison Lalieu: I notice that in this cortisol filled environment, we just don’t have access to that wonderful, clear thinking… and innovation and creativity… and being very present for people. It narrows down our focus and limits our potential for connection.

Joshua Freedman: Okay, so the purpose of these feelings, they’re not bad but the purpose of these feelings is to narrow our attention on problems and to move into protection.

Alison Lalieu: Yes.

Tapping Neuroscience to Handle Emotions Better

Joshua Freedman: Daniel White just typed, “Where’s the neuroscience and the ability to transmute emotions?” Somebody tell us a little bit about the neuroscience here. What’s going on in our brains when we’ve got these feelings. Alison pointed out our cortisol triggers our adrenal system. Our whole body is shifting into a mode to handle threat. The amygdala is activated by these things. Can we do anything at a neurological level?

Lea Brovedani: Josh, here’s the six seconds thing… Six seconds pause!

Joshua Freedman: I’ve heard that before. [laughter]

Lea Brovedani: I learned that in one of the workshops I did that it takes six seconds to shift from one emotion to another. So there has to be the thinking with the feeling. So we have to make that conscious effort, “Is this emotion serving me? Which emotion will serve me better? How do I shift from fear to engagement or from fear to love? Or what is the shift that needs to happen? What is the emotion that better serves me?” What is this saying? We need to have our own emotions as our faithful servants and instead it’s the opposite? So we need to recognize that they are our servants and we can determine which emotion is going to serve us.

Jayne Morrison: Nice point.

Alison Lalieu: Lea, I’ve noticed in my coaching that with people stepping out of that autopilot mode and actually raising their awareness of leading into that emotion. What message is there to give them. That enables them to really shift into a different kind of an emotion quite quickly.

Jayne Morrison: As I was sitting looking at the slide, not the first time, but looking at that list again, I was reflecting on what Yasmeen shared with us about how she’s moved into a new environment where she’s trying to bring about positive change. And a lot of the emotions that she’s feeling in the workplace are these emotions.

Joshua Freedman: And she said uncertainty, fatigue…

Jayne Morrison: Absolutely and I don’t think she was reading the list! Those emotions are putting people right into that cycle of resistance and change is not going to happen.

What’s Worse: Frustration or Apathy?

Joshua Freedman: Yasmeen, would you rather have your employees and team members frustrated or apathetic? Would you rather see them frustrated or no emotion?

Yasmeen Al Bulushi: I would go with frustration and deal with it, rather than no emotion. At least if there is an emotion, even a little bit… as Alison was saying, about shifting that emotion to a positive one for them to see the other part of it. Like you said, some pressure is good, sometimes it’s good because then you are pushing that performance. But once they know the other part of it, I think that frustration can be shifted or can be dealt with. But if no emotion, that would be really very big danger zone for me.

Joshua Freedman: Jayne, what’s good about frustration?

Jayne Morrison: I think frustration actually means that I can still care. I care enough to feel frustrated and I want to solve a problem. I would certainly go with the frustration rather than apathy because apathy is, “Hey, I’m disengaged, I’m out of here,” whereas frustration actually focuses my mind and helps me deal with the issue at hand.

John Bentley here has question,”If emotional intelligence is the focus within your organization, what are the results?”

Joshua Freedman: I’m so glad you asked….

You can see frustration is still very, very large, but when we code the feelings, we actually see frustration is no longer the biggest. But imagine the difference in showing up in this workplace versus showing up in this workplace. We have so many same feelings in the list.

Jayne Morrison: It’s interesting that frustration is still there because we think of frustration as being negative but as I was saying, for me frustration indicates that I care enough and it gives me the energy to try and focus and solve the problems.

How To Engage Despite Mounting Frustration

Joshua Freedman: How do I actually get the energy of this emotion and use it? Let’s get some more neuroscience in here

Alison, if I’m a leader, you’re coaching me and I’m saying, “Man, All these feelings… and everybody is frustrated.” What do you ask me? How do you help me?

Alison Lalieu: To me, it’s around helping them understand how emotion feels in intensity. We can’t just ignore them.

Joshua Freedman: I can’t just push this aside.

Alison Lalieu: No, we can’t put them in a box. It’s like those balls in a swimming pool, push them down and they just keep popping up. It’s around understanding really, the longer they sit with us the more they’re getting strength and intensity. What might start as a bit of annoyance will build and build and build until ultimately you’re extremely annoyed, then even furious. That beautiful Plutchik model I guess, Josh. The understanding that having that ability to tune in very, very early on and recognize what’s happening and then have a strategy to whether we’re going to breathe through… or whatever is our strategy.

Lea was talking about the sensitivity around the word vulnerability. Well certainly here in Australia there is some sensitivity along with mindfulness at some leadership level which is very interesting to me. Sometimes we find ourselves in some situations using focussed attention rather than mindfulness as a word and they end up buying into that very easily. What do we need to do to really tune into what we’re feeling so that we can recognize it early on and not give it the opportunity to build into a bigger issue. Does that answer your question?

Joshua Freedman: One of the things I was thinking about is that, if I’m frustrated and my employees are frustrated it’s so hard to… how do we deal with that in a civil productive way?

Jayne Morrison: There’s a question here in the chat Josh that resonates with that; “How do you engage with your employees? Are there ways to communicate frustration without risking retribution?”

Joshua Freedman: One of the things I often talk about, and Lea you’re very familiar with this, is that kind of aikido move from being, “Here’s an issue between us to here’s an issue we’re both facing.” Right? So that it’s not that, “I’m frustrated with you” but,”We have a problem.”There’s something phenomenal that happens if we can move the problem from between us.

Lea Brovedani: Yes. Make the shift. One of the problem-solving techniques is that it’s not me-against-you; it’s a triangle. So there’s you and me and there’s the problem. Now the focus is not you vs me, it is both of us focusing on how are we, together, going to solve the problem. If I’m having a discussion with someone who is late often, I can blame them,”You’re irresponsible and late,” or, I can say, “There’s an issue we need to work on together,” and figure out how, together, we are going to solve that problem of lateness.

Joshua Freedman: I feel frustrated about this problem. It’s very different from I feel frustrated with you.

Lea Brovedani: Yes.

Joshua Freedman: Frustration is a signal of a problem. It means our way is blocked.

Lea Brovedani: Yes.

Jayne Morrison: I’m just looking at what Daniel’s written here on the chat. Engage, listen and empower employees to transmute frustration by finding solutions. The solution is in the problem and I think he summed up well what both of you are saying.

Joshua Freedman: Yes!

Well, we’re almost out of time, but we will do a lot more work on this at the Summit.

Key Insights on Trust & Leadership

Jayne Morrison: I would like the Panelists to share just one nugget from what they’re going to share at the Summits, in terms of how they’re going to get organizations to prioritize emotional intelligence.

If you have to leave your participants in your sessions here in Dubai, and Mumbai, with one parting thought about how they can build emotional intelligence into their practices in their organizations to get this 22x higher performance, what would you say? One nugget, who wants to go first?

Joshua Freedman: I’ll tell you mine while people are thinking: What I’ve seen is that most organizational leaders are trained to be quantitatively oriented. As my co-author and friend Max Ghini says, “You get what you measure”. I see that it’s imperative that we do measure the people-side once every couple of years. We need to really put people’s feelings on the organizational dashboard because you get what you measure. If you really are paying attention to this, you’re going to focus on it — and we can show you how.

Lea Brovedani: There are small actions that can give big rewards. Remember one of the five commandments of trust: people will care if they know you care. We talked about trust being reciprocal but start thinking of small actions that can be done every day to bring in one of the five commandments of trust. I’ll share more specifics on this at my session.

Jayne Morrison: Fantastic. Thank you Lea. Yasmeen, you look like you want to jump in.

Yasmeen Al Bulushi: I will share a practical activity with the group to show how not displaying one element of trust in the organization can impact the whole organizational performance.

Jayne Morrison: Nice. I know you’re going to build that into an experimental activity aren’t you? I’m looking forward to that one.

Joshua Freedman: Yes, that sounds great.

Jayne Morrison: Absolutely. Alison?

Alison Lalieu: I’m just in alignment with thinking that these are our future leaders. Come along to my session to find out how an EQ workshop program helped children in just one hour per week for six Seconds. We found it can change their emotional intelligence profile profoundly. This case study happened towards the end of last year. We revisited the same students in the beginning of this year, even with no intervention over the Christmas holidays it has gone up even further.

These children were in year seven, in year eight they didn’t have another intervention, but we kept tracking them. There had been a lot of bullying beginning of this year. The only children that were not involved in the bullying were the ones that were in our case study last year. This school is going to run again next year putting the entire grade through. Can we find out how we did that?

Joshua Freedman: Jayne, we have to put you on a spot too because you’re speaking also.

Jayne Morrison: I resonate with what everybody is saying and I’m thinking about the EQ Café that we had this morning: It’s the small things. It really is this willingness to have the courage to be vulnerable. When it comes to leadership, whether it’s leadership as a teacher, as a parent, in your organization, it starts with that self-awareness of understanding the emotions and how your emotions are showing up and filtering down through the organization to create that climate of trust, that fuels performance.

Awareness, awareness, awareness and yes we will certainly be building a lot on that. I was talking to someone today and I said, “Hey, just bring the whole leadership team. It’s two days of awesome training for that team.” They’re going to be able to pick and choose different sessions that are meaningful for them.

Why Join the World EQ Summit in November?

Six Seconds’ conferences are not these boring conferences where you sit and you listen to a band of professors lecturing you.

The Summit will be highly interactive. You’re going to have multiple workshops and case studies from global experts. I’m just so in awe and so thrilled to have people like Yasmeen and Lea and Alison coming all the way across the world to be with us here and in Mumbai. It’s just fabulous. I am so struggling. Every time I look at this agenda which I have printed out on my desk, I struggle. I know we’ve discussed this amongst us.

Joshua Freedman: How do I choose? [laughs] Well, Jayne you and I we’ll have to divide and conquer.

Jayne Morrison: Of course we’ve got to rely on our Summit ACE reporters, the people who are coming from our certified network who are going to be part of the ACE project and help us mine some of the nuggets of amazing information.

Joshua Freedman: Yes, that’s going to be really powerful to have these ACE reporters there really looking for the practical answers to these questions.

Well, folks thank you for joining us and thank you, panelists. Thank you, Jayne, and we’re looking forward to being all together in Dubai in just under two months.

Jayne Morrison: Absolutely, so if you haven’t booked please I hope you’re going to do that. There are some great offers on. Gather a group together and which is basically four people for three which is really, really awesome. Thank you, all!

Alison Lalieu: Thank you very much.

Jayne Morrison: Lea, Alison and Yasmeen and of course Josh.

Lea Brovedani: I’m looking forward to meeting all of you and just having some time, one on one with all of you.

Jayne Morrison: Fantastic yes. Thanks everyone for attending and this recording will be available.

Joshua Freedman: Yes. Bye everybody.

Lea Brovedani: Bye.

Jayne Morrison: We’ve got another one next week, join us then. Thank you.

Six Seconds supports people to create positive change - everywhere... all the time. Founded in 1997, the organization now has offices in 11+ countries and certified practitioners in over 100, and is the world's preeminent resource for putting emotional intelligence into action.

3 Comments

Thank you for sharing this recording. I run a HR and Coaching business and got my EQ Assessor accreditation this year. I am always looking for ways to get senior leader commitment to EQ and the tips in this webinar have really helped as we can blend these tips into so many general business topics. I’m coming to the summit and can’t wait to learn more. Thank you.

Great conversation, I read it with great interest. Even as an EQ practitioner working with leaders and trust, there is always an opportunity to learn and gain new perspectives from others. Thank you all for sharing in the form of this article, and the opportunity to learn from you.

Wonderful panel discussion and great points from all of speakers. One thing particularly interests me is the conversation on the pop-up word “Frustration”. I admit that this word sounds weak and negative to me at the beginning, while after reading, I’ve got so much positiveness from this word and this totally changed my perception on it. One implication to me is that while people (e.g. couple) face problem to tackle, we shall express our frustration on the problem instead of expressing frustration on the counter part person. The first response brings people together while these second reaction disengages people. Look forward to learn more from the Summit. See you in Dubai.

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